


Why Haven't You Ever Asked Me Out?

by Penthesilea1623



Category: Dragon Age
Genre: AU of an AU, F/M, Fluff, Modern AU, fear of making a move, making a move, what if Annie and Anders had ended up together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-25
Updated: 2015-02-25
Packaged: 2018-03-15 05:22:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3435083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Penthesilea1623/pseuds/Penthesilea1623
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For her birthday feylen asked me for some Annie/Anders fluff and romance, even though in A Happy Accident Annie ends up with Sebastian.</p>
<p>It actually gave me a bit of trouble until I realized what the problem was: I was trying to have Anders make the first move, and that's just not how it would happen.</p>
<p>So here it is, an AU of an AU in the Happy Accident universe.</p>
<p>Takes place about a year after Anders has moved into the apartment above The Hanged Man. Crossposted on my tumblr.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Why Haven't You Ever Asked Me Out?

“Why haven’t you ever asked me out?”

Anders choked on the beer he’d just swallowed.

Well that had come out of seemingly nowhere. He turned to look at the girl beside him.

It was a Saturday night. The rest of their roommates had gone out to do whatever it was people who insisted on going out on Saturday nights did. He and Annie had been sitting on the couch together watching an old black and white movie, one of those frothy comedies where everyone wore hats and talked very fast and said only terribly clever and witty things while sweeping from room to room in a haze of cigarette smoke and alcohol. 

To be perfectly accurate, he’d been sitting. She’d been stretched out beside him with her feet resting on his lap and his hand resting on her bare calf. It was how they usually ended up when they watched television together.

Just another Saturday night with Annie Hawke. Easy. Companionable. Comfortable. And fun. A balm for the stress and exhaustion of the week preceding it.

And then she comes up with a question like that.

She was watching him expectantly, turning the full force of those blue-green eyes on him as if there were nothing unusual about the question. 

_Shit._

Was she really going to go there? They’d been roommates for almost a year. They spent a ridiculous amount of time together. Things were….easy between them. He didn’t think he’d ever had a relationship that worked so well, or so effortlessly, and he’d certainly never had a relationship, sexual or otherwise, that gave him so much pleasure. 

She raised an expectant eyebrow at him. “Anders?”

Why hadn’t he asked her out? He could think of several reasons, most of them bullshit reasons, a few of them not. The truth was he didn’t want to risk it. He’d screwed up his life in almost every way possible: career, marriage, home. Given his track record, if they did get involved chances were good he’d probably fuck that up too. Annie Hawke had become too important to him. He didn’t want to risk losing her.

No matter how attractive he found her. No matter how much he thought about running his hands through those magnificent waist length red curls, no matter how much he wanted to lean over and pull that full upper lip between his own and finally find out what she tasted like. 

_Shit_. He thought again.

Annie started laughing. “Wow. You should see the expression on your face. I really surprised you with that one, didn’t I?”

He sat up straighter and slipped her feet off his lap. “No. Yes.” Maker, he sounded like an idiot. “I didn’t know you wanted me to ask you out.”

“Of course I do. Why wouldn’t I?” She’d pulled her legs back and was sitting cross legged now. She had amazing legs. Slender, pale, surprisingly long given her small stature and as she was wearing a ridiculously small pair of shorts, cut off from an old pair of jeans, almost every inch of them was on display right now.

Was she actually telling him she wanted to date him? Had it been more than just idle curiosity? “Would you like the full list of reasons of why our dating would be an incredibly bad idea?” 

She gave a throaty laugh. That laugh had surprised him the first time he heard it. Rich, low, dirty almost, and entirely incongruous coming from someone who appeared as delicate and ethereal as a fairy princess. “Not especially.” She said, her voice matter of fact. “Do you find me attractive?” 

Alarm bells began to sound in his head. “You know I do.” 

She smiled apparently pleased with the answer, but it wasn’t the kind of smile one expected from someone who had been fishing for the compliment. There was an almost shy quality about it. “Good. I find you attractive too. Would you like to know what I find attractive about you?”

_Yes. Sweet Andraste, yes, please tell me what you could possibly find attractive about this wreck of a human being next to you._ “Annie.” And it sounded like a plea, though for the life of him he couldn’t have said just what he was pleading for: for her to continue on, or for her to stop.

To stop. Of course to stop. That was the right response. 

“Your eyes, of course. “ She began.

“Annie…” He repeated.

“They’re light brown, which should be dull and flat but yours aren’t. Yours glow, like a candle flame through a glass of fine cognac.”

His lips twitched in spite of himself. “Very poetic.” He told her.

She grinned at him. “I worked on it for a while. Then there’s your nose. With the slightest deviation if could have gone horribly wrong, but the Maker knew just when to stop.”

“The Maker is responsible for my nose?”

“Mmm. Because it’s perfect you see. Almost too delicate. Almost too long. Almost too beaky, but then not. It’s not any of those things. It’s just perfect. Oh yes,” She said with a happy sigh. “I could look at your nose for hours.“ 

He stared at her through narrowed eyes. “Just how many beers have you had?” He asked after a moment.

“Only two.” She told him and continued on as if he hadn’t spoken. “But your eyes and nose are nothing compared to your lips.”

“My lips?” He raised an eyebrow at her.

“Your lips.” She confirmed, “I think about your lips all the time.” She leaned forward suddenly going on her hands and knees prowling forward until she was beside him and then taking his beer from his hand and putting it on the coffee table. “To be precise, your lower lip.”

“My lower lip?”

She rolled her eyes at him. “Are you going to repeat everything I say?” She asked, giving him a pointed look. “Yes, your lower lip.” She swung one leg over him so she was straddling his lap and he leaned back stretching his arms along the back of the couch just to keep himself from reaching out and touching her.

Touching her would be bad. If he touched her he wouldn’t want to stop touching her. And that would be so bad, for both of them, but mostly for her.

As it turned out it didn’t matter that he didn’t touch her, because when he leaned back she leaned forward, bracing one hand behind him. Her hair, which she’d washed earlier that evening and then left loose to dry, fell forward and he was enveloped in the scent of her – not just the shampoo she used, some floral concoction purchased from a stand in the Lowtown Market that claimed to use only ‘all natural’ ingredients and whose owner he’d pissed off by pointing out that technically chemicals were ‘all natural’, but her, that sweet, fresh smell that was so uniquely her, that he could have identified blindfolded. He gripped the back of the couch tighter.

Annie seemed not to have noticed. “Your lower lip pouts, quite independently from the rest of your face.” She told him. She tilted her head as if considering it. “It positively cries out for attention.” She raised a finger and slowly, softly and quite deliberately traced the full length of it. 

_Sweet Andraste_ , he thought, but to his surprise it was Annie who gave a small shiver and when he looked at her, her lips were parted and her eyes round. 

“It’s soft.” She said with wonder. Her eyes dropped to his mouth again, and again she brushed her finger against his lower lip. “I didn’t expect it would be so soft.”

The knuckles of his hands were white now. He tried to think of something to say to stop this, now, before it was too late, but all that came out of was her name again. “Annie.”

Suddenly, as if she couldn’t stop herself, she swooped in, catching his lower lip between her own and…suckling on it. 

That was the only word his befuddled brain could come up with. Softly, rhythmically, gently but insistently she was suckling on his lower lip.

In spite of his best efforts a small moan escaped him.

She pulled back, releasing his lip with a soft wet pop, and straightened, brush her hair out of her face with one hand. “That was nice. Didn’t you think that was nice?” She asked him. Her cheeks were flushed, and her eyes shining.

He didn’t trust himself to speak but he found himself nodding. _Shit_. He hadn’t meant to nod.

“I’m going to do it again, if that’s all right.” She leaned forwards slowly, pausing a few inches from his mouth. “Feel free to join in if you like.” She said, and he could hear the laughter in her voice. 

And then she kissed him, nibbling and nipping and tasting, and parting his lips and dipping her tongue into his mouth, caressing his, and at his first real taste of her his control snapped.

Putting one hand at the small of her back, and the other between her shoulder blades, he lifted her up and shifted himself, half throwing her onto the couch and covering her slender body with his own. 

He stared down at her for a moment and then he kissed her, kissed her the way he’d been dreaming of kissing her since he’d moved into the apartment, catching her full upper lip between his teeth, running his tongue over it, and tugging at it, because if she’d been thinking of his lip, he’d been fantasizing about hers from the moment he’d met her, how it would feel, and taste and wanting to kiss her, not gently, wanting to see that lip red and swollen from his kisses, wanting to see it even fuller than it normally was.

He should stop. He should really stop. 

But she was kissing him back now, reaching up and tugging the elastic free from his hair and running her hands through it, trying to take control of the kiss, but he didn’t want that. He grabbed her wrists and pinned them by her head. 

She tried to pull her hands free, but he wouldn’t let her. “Kiss me.” She whispered.

He stared hungrily at her. Her red hair was spread out around her, and how many times had he imagined it like that spread out on his pillow. As he watched she ran her tongue over her lips and he saw he’d gotten his wish; they were redder and fuller and even more irresistible. He could see her pulse racing at her throat and he bent his head and kissed it feeling it fluttering almost birdlike under his lips. The top button of the thin cotton camisole she wore had come unfastened and he couldn’t stop himself from trailing his mouth from her throat to that exposed skin, anymore then he could help nudging aside the fabric and running his tongue along the gentle swell of her breast. 

Annie gave a small whimper, and arched against him.

_What the fuck was he doing?_

He released her hands and sat up. “I shouldn’t have done that.” He said, staring straight ahead. “I’m sorry.”

She sat up a few seconds later, moving to the corner of the couch with her knees bent and her arms wrapped around one of the throw pillows. “You’re sorry?” She repeated.

“Yes.”

“Sorry as in you wish you hadn’t done it? That you wish I hadn’t done it?”

_No._ “Yes.” He lied. 

“I don’t believe you.” She said softly.

_Fuck._ “It was a mistake.” He told her. 

To his surprise she started laughing, “You are so full of shit, do you know that? You liked that as much as I did, and I’ll bet you’ve even been thinking about it as long as I have.”

_Longer_. “That doesn’t matter.” He said, and he meant it. ”It wouldn’t work out between us. I’m too old for you, and too bitter, and I’ve made a wreck of my life. At this stage of things all I would do was hurt you, and I think hurting you like that would destroy me. You don’t need me in your life. And I don’t think you really want me. I think you’re imagining it."

For the first time she looked angry. “Maker you can be an arrogant s.o.b..” She tossed the throw pillow on the couch. “What right do you have to tell me if what I’m feeling is real or not?” 

“I…” He started to say.

“Think about this; how are you going to feel if I decide that yes, you’re right, I was imagining everything. How will you feel if someone else comes along, some knight on a shining white horse, who'll sweep me off my feet and carry me off to happily ever after land, because you thought you weren’t good enough for me?”

He’d feel like shit. He’d feel like an idiot. But there was no way he was going to tell her that. “I think it’s the man who’s supposed to be shining, not the horse.”

She scowled at him. 

Ah yes. Poorly timed humor. Because that had always worked so well for him.

“Don’t joke about this.” She warned him. “What if this is our one opportunity and if we don’t take advantage of it now, it will never happen. What if we become each other’s ‘what if’? Wouldn’t you always wonder what it could have been like? What we could have been like?” 

It was as if that little voice in his head that kept him awake late at night had suddenly taken physical form, and just to twist the knife had chosen the form most likely to tempt him. He couldn’t think of what to say.

She sighed and shook her head. “I could talk until I’m blue in the face and it wouldn’t matter that I was right, would it? You’d just sit there saying ‘I can’t’.” 

It was a little frightening how well she knew him.

She didn’t speak for a few minutes. 

“All right.” She announced finally. “Let’s try something completely different. “ She turned to face him. “I’m going to go upstairs to my room. I’m going to undress. I’m going to take off every stich of clothing I’m wearing, and I’m going to slide naked between my sheets.” The look she gave him was almost a challenge. “I never lock my bedroom door, you know that, so the door will be open.“ She informed him. “For twenty minutes. After that I’m going to lock it.”

It was his turn to frown. “Are you giving me an ultimatum?” He asked trying to sound outraged, but ending sounding worried instead.

She gave a small shrug. “Only sort of. If you don’t join me in the allotted time we’ll simply pretend tonight never happened. We’ll go on the way we have, as friends, just friends, no recriminations, no guilt, no blame.” She smiled at him, a genuine, sweet smile. That smile that he adored, that he adored since the first time he'd seen her. “I love you, you silly man. I’ll love you either way, but I think we’d be awfully good together, don’t you?” She turned and walked away, pausing at the doorway to look over her shoulder at him. “If I don’t see you later, sleep well.” 

And then she was gone, and he could hear her footsteps on the stairs leading to the other bedrooms, and to the attic where she slept.

Twenty minutes to make a potentially life-changing decision.

He sat there, paralyzed, unable to move, for ten.

He spent another five cleaning up and turning out the lights, and then unable to think of anything else to stop himself he went up the stairs to the second floor of the apartment.

He paused outside his bedroom door. If he were smart he’d just go in there. If he truly had her best interests at heart, he’d go in there, close the door and go to sleep, or barring that lie awake staring at the ceiling and regretting his life choices.

Just another Saturday night, then.

He put his hand on his doorknob and then stopped. What if he took a chance? What if he embraced Annie’s cock-eyed optimism for once? 

He stepped back and turned towards the stairs to the attic, his heart pounding. Maybe this would work out. Maybe he could finally catch a break. Maybe some of that brightness that Annie Hawke carried around with her in a seemingly endless supply would rub off on him. 

He’d reached her door and put his hand out to open it.

Or maybe he would drag her into his darkness. 

He stood there, paralyzed again. 

He looked down at his watch. A minute and a half. 

He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t take that risk. He turned and walked back to his room, closing the door behind him and resting his forehead against it. He stood there like that, in the dark, staring at his illuminated watch dial as that last minute ticked away, grateful that he’d had sense enough not to stand by Annie’s door and have to hear that lock turn, ending any dream he’d had of being with her.

His heart sank.

_Holy Shit, what had he just done?_

He let out a groan. “I am a coward and an idiot.” He announced to the room. 

“You really are.” 

He spun around, his eyes accustomed enough to the dark now that he could see her there. 

_Annie._

In his bed, under his sheets, lying on her side with her head propped up on her hand. 

And from what he could tell from the trail of clothing between the door and said bed, she was, in fact, completely naked.

He blinked at her. “Did you get lost?” He asked.

“Not at all.” She told him with a smile. “I’m exactly where I want to be.” She tilted her head as she looked at him. “Are you?”

_No. No he wasn’t._

He yanked his shirt off over his head and crossed the room, kicking his shoes off as he walked. 

She sat up, getting to her knees just as he reached the bed, just in time for him to pull her against him reveling in the feel of her bare skin against his chest, plunging his hands into her hair and tilting back her head, staring at her for a moment before kissing her roughly, her mouth, her face, her throat.

“This will be a disaster.” He muttered. “But I can’t help myself any longer.” 

“Your sweet nothings need some work.” She pointed out to him and he straightened up laughing.

“You’re probably right.” He told her. He brushed her hair back from her shoulders looking at her. She was perfect.

"The kissing part was good though. We could focus on that and see where it takes us?” She suggested.

“Yes.” He agreed. “Yes. That sounds like a very good plan.”


End file.
